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Benjamin Banneker, the Negro Mathematician and Astronomer

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Benjamin Banneker, the Negro Mathematician and Astronomer THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY VOL. III-APRIL, 1918-No. 2 BENJAMIN BANNEKER, THE NEGRO MATHE- MATICIAN AND ASTRONOMER The cityof Washington. very recently celebrated the 125th annivers.aryof the completionof the surveyand layingout of theF'ederal Territory constituting the District of Colum- bia. This was executedunder the supervision of thefamous Frenchcivil engineer,Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant, as thehead of a commissionappointed by GeorgeWashington, thenpresident of theUnited States. Servingas one of the commissioners,sitting in conferencewith themand per- formingan importantpart in themathematical calculations involvedin the survey,was the Negro mathematicianand astronomer,Benjamin Banneker. As theredid not appear to be duringthis celebration any dispositionto give!proper recognitionto the scientificwork done by Banneker,the writerhas thoughtit opportuneto presentin this forma briefreview of Barneker's life so as to revivean interestin him and point out some of this useful man's important achievements. On a previousoccasion the writerundertook to collect somedata withthe same objectin view,and at thattime he addresseda letterto the postmasterat EllicottCity, Mary- land,asking to be put in touchwith some one of theEllicott family,who mightfurnish reliable data on the subject. In thisway, correspondence was establishedwith the fam- ily of Mrs. MarthaEllicott Tyson,of Baltimore. One of 99 100 JOURNALOF NEGRO HISTORY her descendants,Mrs. TysonManly, kindly came over from Baltimore,and, calling on the writerat the United States PatentOffice, presented him with a copyof the life of Ban- neker,published in Philadelphiain 1884,and compiledfrom the papers of MarthaEllicott Tyson, who was the daughter of GeorgeEllicott, a memberof thenoted Maryland family, who establishedthe business that developedthe town of Ellicott City. BetweenGeorge Ellicot.t and BenjaminBanneker, Mrs. Tyson says, thereexisted "a special sympathy,"and she furtherrefers to her fatheras " thewarmest friend of that extraordinaryman. '2 Her fatherhad manyof Banneker's manuscripts,from which he intendedto compilea biography of his friend,but his unusuallybusy commerciallife af- fordedhim no leisurein whichto carryout thismuch cher- ished plan. Mrs. Tyson's account,therefore, can be relied upon as comingdirectly from those who, personally know- ing Banneker,and livingin the samecommunity in frequent contactwith him, had preservedaccurate data. from which to publishthe truerecord of his life. On a farmlocated near thePatapsco River, within about ten miles of the city of Baltimore,in the State of Mary- land,on the9th day of November,1731, Benjamin Banneker was born. Various accountsare given of his ancestry. One of his biographersstates that " therewas not a drop of whiteblood in his veins,"' anotherasserts with positive- ness thathis parentsand grandparentswere all nativeAfri- cans.3 In still anothersketch of Banneker'slife, read be- forethe MarylandHistorical Society, on May 1, 1845,it is statedthat " Banneker'smether was the child of natives of Africaso thatto no admixtureof the blood of the white man was he indebtedfor his peculiar and extraordinary abilities."4 ThomasJefferson said tha-tBanneker was the 1 The LeisureHour, 1853, II, p. 54. 2 Tyson,Banneker, The Afric-AmericanAstronomer, p. 10. 3 The AtlanticMonthly, XI, p. 80. 4 In another particular this same sketch differsfrom several others,namely, in locating young Banneker at "an obecure and distant country school" with no mention of the oft-repeated assertion that the school was one attended BENJAMIN BANNEKER 101 " son of a blackman born in Africaand a blackwoman born in the UnitedStates."5 Accordingto Mrs. Tyson's accountBanneker's mother and fatherwere Negroes,but his maternalgrandmother was a whitewoman of Englishbirth, who had been legally marriedto a nativeAfrican. The antecedentcircumstances of thismarriage were so unusualas to justifyspecial men- tion. Mollie Welsh was an English womanof the servant class, employedon a cattle farmin England wherea part of herdaily duty was themilking of thecows. She was one day chargedwith having stolen a pail of milkthat had, in fact,been kicked over by a cow. The chargeseems to have been takenas proved,and in lieu of a severerpunishment she was sentencedto be shippedto America. Being unable to pay forher passage she was sold,on her arrivalin Amer- ica, to a tobaccoplanter on the Patapsco River to serve a termof seven years to pay the cost of her passage from England. At the end of her period of service,this Mollie Welsh,who is describedas " a person of exceedinglyfair complexionand modera.temental piowers," was able to buy a portionof thefarm on whichshe had worked.6 In 1692, by both white andl colored children. The author of the last-mentionedsketch was evidently not sure of these two statements,and therefore did not include them. In fact, he appears not to have been quite sure of the propriety of submittingany sketch at all of this "free man of color" to the distinguished body constitutingthe Maryland Historical Society, for there was a clear note of apology in his opening declaration that "A few words may be necessary to explain why a memoir of a free man of color, formerlya resident of Mary- land, is deemed of sufficientinterest to be presented to the Historical Society. " But he justified his efforton the ground that "no questions relating to our country (are) of more interest than those connected with her colored popula- tion"; that that interest had "acquired an absorbing character"; that the presence of the colored population in States where slavery existed "modified their institutionsin important particulars," and effected"in a greater or less degree the character of the dominant race"; and "for this reason alone," he said, " the memoir of a colored man, who had distinguished himself in an abstruse science, by birth a Marylander, claims consideration from those who have associated to collect and preserve facts and records relating to the men and deeds of the past.' '-J. H. B. Latrobe in Maryland Historical Society Pulblications,I, p. 8. 5 Ford edition of Jefferson's Writings,V, p. 379. 6 In the memoir of Banneker, above mentioned,read before the Maryland 102 JOURNALOF NEGRO HISTORY she purchasedtwo African slaves froma shipin the Chesa- peake Bay nearAnnapolis. One ofthese slaves namedBan- naky,subsequently Anglicized as Banneker,was the son of an Africanking, and was stolen by slave dealers on the coast of Africa.7 With thesetwo slaves as her assistants, MollieWelsh industriously cultivated her farm for a number of years withsuch gratifying success that she feltimpelled afterwardsto release her two slaves frombondage. The slave Bannekerha.d gained such favor in the eyes of his ownerthat she marriedhim directlyafter releasinghim frombondage, notwithstanding the fact thathis recordfor susta.inedindustry had not equalledthat of his fellowslave, whileserving their owner on herfarm-a factthat was, per- haps due to Banneker'snatural inclinationto indulgehis royalprerogatives. This Bannekeris describedas "a man of muchintelligence and finetemper, with a, very agreeable presence,dignified manner and contemplativehabits."8 Therewere born of thismarriage four children of whom the eldest daughter,Mary, married a native Africanwho had beenpurchased from a slave shipby anotherplanter in her neighborhood.This slave was of a devoutnature, and earlybecame a memberof the Churchof England,receiving at his baptismthe name of Robert. Afterbaptism, Rob- ert's masterset himfree. It was, therefore,as a free,man thathe becamethe husbandof Mary Banneker,whose sur- namehe adoptedfor his own. Four childrenwere born to Robertand Mary Banneker,one boy and threegirls, the eldestbeing Benjamin, the subjectof this sketch. Robert Bannekerhad evidentlyformed some of the habitsof thriftevinced by his mother-in-law,Mollie Welsh, forit is on recordthat in 1737within a fewyears afterre- ceivinghis freedomhe purchaseda farmof 120 acres from HistoricalSociety in 1845, and in anothermemoir of Banneker,read before the same Societyby Mr. J. Saurin Norris,in 1854, the estate purehasedby Mollie Welsh is referredto as "a small farmnear the presentsite of Balti- more," and "purchased at a merelynominal price." See Norris's Memoir, p. 3. 7 Norris'IsMemoir, p. 4; Williams's Historyof the Negro Race, p. 386. 8 Tyson,Bmnneker, p. 10. BENJAMIN BANNEKER 103 RichardGist, paying for it 17,0009p.ounds of tobacco,which in thosedays servedas a legal mediumof exchange. This farm,located on thePatapsco River,within about ten miles of the townof Baltimore,thus became the Bannekerhome- stead. Here it was that youngBenjamin spenthis early years and grew to manhood,assisting his fatherwith the generalwork of the farm. Bannekervery early showeidsigns of precocity,which made himthe special favoriteof his maternalgrandmother who tookdelight in tea.chinghim to the extentof her own limitedmental endowment. She taughthim to studythe Bible, and had him read it to her at regularintervals for thepurpose of traininghim along religious lines of thought. He attendeda smallschool in his neighborhoodwhere a few whiteand coloredchildren were taughtby the same white schoolmaster.Until the cottongin and othermechanical appliancesmade Negroestoo valuable as tools of exploita- tionto be allowedanything sio dangerous as education,there wereto be foundhere and therein the South pioneeredu- cators at the feet of whom eve-nNegroes mightsit and learn.'0 As a boy at schoolyoung Banneker is said to have spent verylittle, if any,of his
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